Tuesday, October 07, 2014

CORPORATIONS ARE ON A LAND GRAB ACROSS THE WORLD WITH HELP FROM THE WORLD BANKERS

The World Bank’s Doing Business ranking gives points to countries when they act in favour of the “ease of doing business.” This consists of smoothing the way for corporations’ activity by, for instance, cutting administrative procedures, lowering corporate taxes, removing environmental and social regulations, or lowering trade barriers.

The ranking system also encourages land reforms that tend to make land just a marketable commodity, easily accessible to wealthy corporations. In the process, they neglect things like human rights, the protection of workers, and the sustainable use of natural resources.

WHO’S LOSING OUT?

The people most impacted by these policies are smallholder farmers, who produce 80 percent of the food consumed in the developing world especially in Africa. They are the backbone of the food system and are by far the principal investors and main employers in developing countries’ agricultural sector. It is their capacity to invest and develop their land that should be strengthened.

There is more than enough food for everyone, if proper support is given to smallholder farmers, pastoralists and Indigenous Peoples. The World Bank’s preference, though, is to use its power, through weapons like the Doing Business rankings and benchmarking the Business of Agriculture, to impose its one-size-fits, corporate-led all model of development. This jeopardizes developing countries’ ability to feed themselves and helps drive inequality all over the world.

CALL TO ACTION

When you show solidarity you bring together the sparks that start a revolution.

The banks, the 1%, the corporations, Wall Street, the global elite have infiltrated once-democratic institutions built by our predecessors’ persistent and thankless organising. To root them out will require not a single revolutionary moment from the old playbook but a shift of consciousness on the global scale. This is what we are about.

On October 10th, we will turn our furious love on the World Bank; that critical link in the chain between Wall Street and the “developing world”. All over the world, from Lagos to Dakar to Washington DC, from Mexico City to Delhi, we will be gathering, demonstrating, speaking, writing, exposing and taking on digital actions against the world bankers.

We will do everything in our considerable power to stand against the World Bank’s insane, suicidal prescription for development that puts the growth of corporate power above all else; that ignores the truth of how the world is fed by ordinary people on small farms, not corporations; and that denies the science of how our fields, our rivers, and even our bodies are being poisoned by industrial farming whose only true beneficiaries are the 1%.

ACTION IN NIGERIA

In Nigeria, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) will stage a digital action across various social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

Most importantly we will spearhead a CrowdRing (or missed call) campaign against the World Bank in Nigeria. The CrowdRing or Missed Call campaign enables you to sign our petition for free using your regular mobile phone. The advantage of this tactic is that you (the signer) is not charged for beeping or flashing us while you sign on with your missed call.